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Artist Statement
My work is for the eyes,
hands, and the heart. I attempt to create pottery and sculpture with the same
dynamic energy as my mentors and the Shigaraki and Bizen artists of traditions’
past--yet as an American who as been inspired by these fine works. I am
attracted to the sculptural qualities of the stoneware clay body I use--its
earthiness and rawness of being, its masculinity and coarseness-it is all there
for you to see--it is a heavily grogged, iron-laden stoneware body that is
single fired or bisqued. I also use its polar opposite, porcelain, with its
silky smooth, feminine character, its whiteness and purity, it softness and
kindness to my hands allows me to communicate something the stoneware can not.
The works are glazed with shino because of its atmospheric interaction,
earthiness as well as ash, temmoku, crystalline and salt glazes. I enjoy the
green gems of pooled ash and the depth of the clay/glaze relationship that my
anagama wood firing process allows or my layering of glazes approach I take with
the cone 10 gas kiln. With its torn and rough surfaces on the outside, its
smooth and gentle pushed surfaces on the inside, my work is about struggle and
development, searching and finding as one progresses along their own pathway.
Like the Zen Tea Masters and their Taoist
influence, I try to coordinate the elements in space, set the canvas of the clay
up for the “Happy Accidents” to take place in my work.
It is a relationship between myself, the clay,
glazes and firing process and something else that is a mystery that keeps me
working in and continually drawn to clay with a variety of firing processes and
particularly the wood firing process--for
the wood firing process embodies all the five elements: earth, air, fire,
water, ether, and their enveloping relationships of fusion and timelessness.
Under the starry night, this exciting and
unbelievably labor intensive process brings me into the forge of creation—a soul
expressing itself on the curtails of the creator, a child imitating its father,
a spirit making its way in this creation, creating, developing, becoming.
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